Robust adaptive preview control design for autonomous carrier landing of F/A-18 aircraft

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to design an innovative autonomous carrier landing system (ACLS) using novel robust adaptive preview control (RAPC) method, which can assure safe and successful autonomous carrier landing under the influence of airwake disturbance and irregular deck motion. To design a deck motion predictor based on an unscented Kalman filter (UKF), which predicts the touchdown point, very precisely. Design/methodology/approach An ACLS is comprising a UKF based deck motion predictor, a previewable glide path module and a control system. The previewable information is augmented with the system and then latitude and longitudinal controllers are designed based on the preview control scheme, in which the robust adaptive feedback and feedforward gain’s laws are obtained through Lyapunov stability theorem and linear matrix inequality approach, guarantying the closed-loop system’s asymptotic stability. Findings The autonomous carrier landing problem is solved by proposing robust ACLS, which is validated through numerical simulation in presence of sea disturbance and time-varying external disturbances. Practical implications The ACLS is designed considering the practical aspects of the application, presenting superior performance with extended robustness. Originality/value The novel RAPC, relative motion-based guidance system and deck motion compensation mechanism are developed and presented, never been implemented for autonomous carrier landing operations.

Fault-Tolerant Control for Carrier-Based Aircraft Based on Adaptive Fuzzy Sliding-Mode Method

“…ĥ(s| θh ) = θT h ξ(s) (23) where ĥ(s| θh ) is the output of the fuzzy system, ξ(s) is the fuzzy vector, and the vector θT h varies in accordance with the adaptive laws. The optimal parameter is defined as…”

“…Early landing control technology was mainly based on classical control [9][10][11], but that could not give CBA favourable landing performance in a complex landing environment. Therefore, scholars have provided many methods for improvement based on modern control theory, such as fixed-time control [12,13], dynamic inversion control [14], fuzzy control [15,16], predictive control [17,18], sliding-mode control [19,20], backstepping control [21] and adaptive control [22,23]. However, all the aforementioned studies were based on the hypothesis that CBA remains in their normal states without any faults, whereas in reality, they are susceptible to combat damage and actuator faults due to complex flight environments and large variations in dynamic pressure in operational missions, leading to serious degradation of system performance and posing direct threats to landing safety.…”

Feasibility and stability of preview control for 2-D discrete-time systems described by the Roesser model

“…The system's trajectory can also be improved using preview control, for example, by reducing energy use or increasing throughput. In general, using preview control can enhance the effectiveness and performance of DT systems in a variety of applications [25,26].…”

Robust fault-tolerant preview control for automatic landing of carrier-based aircraft

“…Cao et al (2021) presented the tracking controller of transition window based on robust preview control for aerospace vehicle. The robust preview control and adaptive control were combined to design the ACLS with consideration of irregular deck motion (Bhatia et al, 2021). However, there exists little literature on faulttolerant preview control.…”